I hate bike riding with my kid

There, I said it. I like doing almost everything else with her, as long as we don't have to be punctual, but bike riding sucks. Want to know why?

She prefers to ride on the sidewalk. But she is simply not capable of scooting over for pedestrians. And she can't go over curbs, so once per block, I have to get off my bike, walk to the curb, convince her to get about four feet closer to the curb so I can actually grab onto her bike, and walk both our bikes across the street and onto the other sidewalk. Did I mention that was once per block?

If I can get her to ride in the street, I cut a year off my life once per block. Why? Because no matter how many times or ways I say, "No, a little more to the right. RIGHTRIGHTRIGHT! Can you aim to be to the right of those letters? Follow the line of the gutter. We're going to be so far to the right that as we pass this parked car, we could reach out with our fingertips and touch it. Not that we're going to. RIGHT!" it doesn't matter. She drifts happily into the path of cars until I get off and drag her back towards the bike lane.

She doesn't appear to believe in momentum, either, so her pace is actually far, far slower than her walking pace. Sometimes she just gets right off and walks it, but not from the side, as you do sometimes. She straddles it and walks. But that means that with every step, the pedals run into her calves, which is awkward and slows her down more. She will not listen to reason about why this is not a good way to locomote.

Once in a while, she chooses to walk her bike across something like a driveway because it has like a 2% grade at either side. She'll walk it from the side, but she'll let her front wheel turn sideways so that instead of wheeling the damn thing, she has to drag it.

If she's on the sidewalk, there are no driveways, and she actually gets a little speed going, she's very likely to apply the brakes, put her feet on the ground, and speechify for a minute. "I was going really fast. I'm actually quite scared of going so fast. That's why I stopped. You remember that I want to go to the triangle park, not East Portal park? Why was East Portal park a quarry? Did a quarryosaurus come and eat all the rock?" Then I convince her to get going again, and she stops two houses down. "I can't believe that triangle park used to just be a patch of weeds, can you? I really like how it has the lion head fountain..."

We went 0.8 miles and it took 40 minutes. Bless her heart, but I wish I could hire a kid-rider the way you hire a dig walker. Just... take my kid out for a bike ride once in a while. It's probably good for her, but lord knows I don't want to do it.